


Confessionals

by Avelera



Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Alien Technology, Extended Scene, F/M, Love, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Stream of Consciousness, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 09:09:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10084184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avelera/pseuds/Avelera
Summary: They are melding, becoming Eros, becoming one. Miller can see all that Julie is, her whole life laid out in front of him. Which means... she can see all that he is.And he is ashamed.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [legitimate_salvage (ifinkufreaky)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifinkufreaky/gifts).



> Based on a discussion by [the-rocinante](http://avelera.tumblr.com/post/158004761990/oooh-could-you-tell-us-more-about-your-theory) about how "the kiss" when Julie and Miller met was as much real as it was metaphorical of a sort of bonding as they both became one with the protomolecule. I found the concept fascinating, and thought to represent the idea here.
> 
> This fic is dedicated to legitimate_salvage, in thanks for all her encouragement. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

_What is a life?_

An asteroid is hurtling towards the Earth, breaking all laws of gods and men. It has been hollowed out and hollowed out and hollowed out, by human hand, by human knowledge, by the touch of a molecule from beyond the reach of our sun.

Miller breathes unprotected air, inhaling the scent of cumin, of earth, of something deep and biological emanating from the life that pulses through the walls. He swallows sparks of light like fireflies that crackle in his mind like fireworks, sees glimpses of worlds he can’t understand. Grass, and stars, Earth and a planet that pulses a deep electric blue that looks nothing like the home of his people. The lights burrow inside of him, and he barely registers the invasion with Julie’s hand crackling in his, cool and soft and no longer human. No longer able to feel. Sensation fades from his hands as well, he feels nothing and everything.

 _There is a tree growing, and the arrows strike it one after the other, thud, thud, thud_.

_A Belter protest, heart pounding fire inside her and she is one of them, there are tears tracking down her- his face- their face…._

_She is floating through the halls of the Anubis, thirst clawing at her throat._

He can see inside her thoughts. He’s seeing the life of Julie Mao, living it. He sees her mother, black hair and high cheekbones, he sees a sister and complicated uncertain feelings of guilt and a sense of loss well near his heart. The fireflies are carrying memories between the two of them, images like little packets of data, little sparks of life. And with that realization comes a stab of fear, a flush of humiliation.

She’s going to see what’s inside of him.

When their lips touched it was soft and electric. He is in her arms and in her mind, and she is in his, and there is no difference. Was there ever a difference? The barriers between them seem so fragile, delicate as spiderwebs, humanity so close and yet so far from understanding what they have, and what they could be. From reaching each other.

Miller can feel the warmth of Julie’s body, he can feel the vast expanse of nothingness outside the walls, he can feel _the work_ , the will that drives the asteroid named for desire forward through the vacuum of space. He can feel its intent, the castles in the air it will seek to build. He can feel it _becoming_.

He can feel it yield to Julie Mao, as he is yielding to Julie Mao.

What are they except two tiny collections of sensory data and memory, less than a century of cumulative life, now perched together over a vast _being_ that carries within it the building blocks of creation itself? Miller and Julie’s consciousnesses are like sea foam floating upon an endless ocean, easily swallowed and dissolved, yet forever part of the whole. There are a thousand voices within, the voices of Eros, with Julie as their guiding star. He is part of her, he is home.

She can see inside him.

 _Don’t be afraid,_  Julie says without words.

Tears prick Miller’s eyes, the memory of Miller’s eyes. He is only a man, even when attached to so vast a whole and melding by the second, his soul is still separate and he feels the agonizing burn of shame.

 _Don’t look, please,_ he begs. _Don’t look at me_.

There is no holding back such a consciousness. So it begins, the flood.

_His wife storming out the door._

_The station joke, drunk and wrung out, a waste of life._

_Trying to find her, knowing that he will disappoint Julie Mao, that she will disappoint him._

_Miller sees himself, naked and alone. A sad, pathetic little man, a killer who has lost his mind over a woman he never met, who would have hated him on sight. He had hoped for the one person that was never his to hope for. Instead he found her dead, and wished for death, and sought it, and found her, and now she could_ see _everything he had done, everything he had become to find her._

_No, no he never wanted her to see this. He had wanted to find her alive, and then he would have walked away. He would have. He wouldn’t have forced her to meet this ruin, he would have left before she saw that…_

_He was nothing._

Julie sees it now. Every unworthy thought, every shame, every worthless corner of his heart that might have once dreamed of knowing her more than he deserved. He cannot hold it back and so he offers it all, a broken confession. The dead in the halls of Eros, killed by a single shot to the throat. The bribes on Ceres. The Belters he had turned away or turned in, his people, _their_ people. She had fought and died for them and he had looked away.

He had seen her, and thought if he could just replace her, if he could only make some vision of her proud, he could somehow make it better than it had been. But even that was only about him and not her and she was the one who deserved better, had deserved more than he had been able to give. 

_Forgive me_ , he says, not expecting forgiveness any more than a supplicant expects to be answered by God. _I loved you. Still do_. 

Shame sits in his heart darker than grief, the force that had built him up since he saw her face, that had torn him apart when he saw her body. It wasn’t fair to her to be loved by someone like him. _I’m sorry_. 

_Shhh_ , Julie Mao whispers in his mind. Their lips break apart but the connection does not fade with it. It is faster now, data streaming through his mind and her mind and the vast consciousness that grows within them. There is more. She is showing him more, pushing it towards him, and he tastes the shame in her heart like acid, a gift she offers him in recompense.

_Don’t be_ , she whispers in his mind. _Forgive_ me, she says, and shows him.

_I abandoned my sister._

_I didn’t fight him hard enough._

_I let my crew die._

_I doomed Eros._

_I was wrong._

_I was spoiled._

_I brought this upon us all._

_I destroyed you, and all you wanted to do was help me._

The flashes fill Miller’s mind, dripping in guilt. He can taste the salt of tears as if he has kissed them from her cheek. He wants to hold her. _No, no, no_ , Miller whispers back. _No Julie, this wasn’t your fault._

She smiles sadly at him. _Don’t you see?_ I _am nothing. I am regret._

Miller struggles for how to show her she is wrong, but the streams of thought and knowledge feel clumsy in his hands. Is he even really speaking? It feels as if time has slowed, has changed, moving backwards and forwards at once. Are they standing on Eros, or are they in her apartment on Ceres? Is she sitting in her red flightsuit, him with his hat in hand on one of the viewing decks, talking late into the night like old friends, like lovers, like a couple married for a hundred years? Hadn’t they always been together? Why had they waited so long to speak?

_Hey, hey no it’s ok. I forgive you too,_ he says. The words taste wrong, they’re so unnecessary, except he feels the light that pulses off her, the simple relief that washes from her through him.

And it’s alright. Each heart beat is a thousand years where they know one another, where all they had once been recedes further away as it becomes part of a greater whole.

What remains of Miller sees the man he had once been, the rifts of grief and loneliness tearing him apart. He sees it, and beyond it a thousand more, every human on the station, in the galaxy and the rifts of their sins and of their hopes and their fragile loves and fears. His sin are not so dark and not so terrible. He is not absolved, and neither is Julie. He sees the perfect daughter, the spoiled child, the rebel, the terrorist, the traitor, the plague-bearer, the destroyer of worlds. He sees the guilt as a shadow inside her, a monster to rival of his own. They are not absolved, they merely _are_. 

He floats in the hands of the only one who can forgive the one sin he wants forgiven, the sin of hoping for more of her than was his to know. He dare not ask, and yet it is given. The walls are crumbling, they are no longer separate people, none of them are. There is the work, and beyond there are a thousand more souls, a thousand-thousand more. Memories and minds and failure and loss and shame. And against all that the pain of the past is no longer so terrible. They are not alone anymore. 

They are _Eros_ , in every sense of the word.

Julie draws him close him, holds him against her, cradles him in the heart of an asteroid, in the cradle of a civilization yet to be born. In bodies that matter less by the second. Their thoughts stretch and there is time and time and time. They are walking hand in hand. 

A golden star waits on the horizon for them to come home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I would love to hear your thoughts, it's what makes all of this worthwhile. And/or feel free to share this story on Tumblr from the original post [here](http://avelera.tumblr.com/post/158005272890/confessionals-1595-words-by-avelera-chapters).


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